VERMONT SHRED TOUR: Barnstorming VT By Any Means

Unlike most New England shred states strewn with bombproof ice slopes and Boston Joeys eating sandwiches on the lips of take-offs, Vermont can be as epic as the Rockies due to its geographical qualities and tendency to snow heavily. Oh, you don’t believe me? Let’s examine the “Barn Storm”—the surge of radness that puked roughly thirty inches of snow across sections of the Green Mountain State this past February, rendering everything a wave.

The blizzard’s wake prompted Burlington chicks to ditch their Birkenstocks for knee-high Eskimo boots, Stowe Mountain Rescue to issue an avalanche warning for Mt. Mansfield, and a mustachioed chain-smoker by the name of Ryan Runke to invite me along on a Vermont shred tour. Runke—a good-natured kook boarder I had not known well before the storm—asked me multiple times if I was “man enough” for the trip. I answered yes, but in hindsight, I should have told him no.

Plans for the tour were vague and changed frequently, yet somehow at zero hour, all the riders dropping in on the saga were accounted for. Québec-famous knuckledraggers Marie-France Roy, Max Legend, and Will Lavigne smuggled themselves across the border; Vermont deathrider Jake Sullivan took an extra-long lunch break from Darkside Killington; and Norwegian sky pilot Marius Otterstad scored a flight to America from the land of albino gnomes.

Day One of the Vermont shred tour kicked off with Runke taking us to an abandoned junkyard in Underhill (population negative five people) and then telling us to scope the joint for sick features. Within two minutes, Marie-France spotted massive eight-foot diameter death tubes lying in a far-flung corner of the property. With little sunlight remaining in the day, our brave photographer Mike Paddock double-timed some track pack with Runke’s snowmobile. The runway ran parallel to the tubes in order to maximize the tow-in speed.

Marius Otterstad scored first dibs on the tow-in, subsequently nailing the most tube-ular trick of the session by stomping a warp-speed layback to fakie. Marie upped the ante with a Cab 270 that raised Vermont’s Gross Domestic Gnarlitude by 100%. All the other snow bros were either not man enough to session the death tube or unable to hold on to the sled’s tow rope as Runke gunned it toward the eight-foot diameter steel colossus, leaving plumes of secondhand smoke in his wake.

Darkness crept in and we dashed north to Montgomery, a small town near Vermont’s legendary Jay Peak. Arriving at our hotel—the classy Snowshoe Pub and Lodge—we crammed four slobs to a room, cracked some fun sodas, and hit the nightlife—the musky basement of a seventies ski chalet aptly named Grandpa Grumps. There we encountered a sauced bunch of Canadian college kids unwinding on their winter break at Jay. The mood was mellow until the sky pilot from Norway instigated an under-the-influence border dispute that even the United Nations would have had difficulty solving. The night ended in confusion, but most likely, so does every night in Grandpa Grumps’ basement.

Day Two brought more mayhem and carnage, this time in the form of Will Lavigne airing boned-out frontside 180 melons over a hand-built gap jump with, uh, a freaking log skidder in the middle. In no time, Will’s Québécois compatriot Max Legend bomb-dropped the roof of a dilapidated structure while forty mph Arctic winds threatened the trajectory of his descent. The sessions were hot, but in a stash bag the weather was Vermont-meets-Canadian Plains-harsh. Everyone was pretty much still browned-out from the previous evening, so there was more hanging out than hanging ten happening. That night, Paddock drove the “vangina”—stunk up with soiled shred gear and unshowered peeps—to the University of Vermont for an unofficial campus tour and initiation session on Ledges 101 and Handrails for Boardslide majors.

Day Three kicked off with an acceptance letter to UVM from Dean of Shred Ryan Runke. The obstacle being researched was a down-flat-down ledge within sight of the campus police, but that didn’t deter Marie from tying her sorority sisters’ panties in a knot with a pin-up frontside 180 to switch 50-50, or Will from getting on the Dean’s List with a barbaric 5-0. Around noon, we dropped out of UVM, and instead of hitting the streets, we hit up Burlington High to relive our glory days on the fabled “High Rail.” It was a dork jam until Marie decided to Cab 270 to front board on the down-flat-down, gapping the down-flat section! By dusk, we decided to quit Burlington High for some heart-stopping fare at Al’s French Frys, and then hit the highway for Jake Sullivan’s home in Rut-Vegas. After acquiring accommodation at a shady motor lodge off the main drag, Dean Runke insisted that we bathe our throats in dirty water. Almost everyone of age concurred, and we subsequently closed out the night swilling pints and ripping pool.

Day Four hit everyone on the trip like a face shot of heavy, wet snow. We were running out of time; Marius had to catch a plane to Utah in a day and the Canadians were close to mutiny. Runke, acting on a tip from a local, restored crew morale by running our van aground on the shores of Timber Ridge, an abandoned ski resort inhabited by salty snowmobilers and possessing plenty of barns to wallride, as well as New England’s only hand-crafted quarterpipe. The slednecks were eager to pull Marius and Max full-throttle at anything in sight. Every time Max would nail a wallride to 180 out, snowmobilers barbequing on the deck would lift their burgers in the air and grunt. By early afternoon, the waft of patties on the grill turned things upside down—especially Will on the QP with his frontside handplants. Once the meat was decimated, food coma kicked in, and before long, darkness was upon us. This did little to deter Vermont Deathrider Jake Sullivan and Québeckian Crusher Will Lavigne from getting nocturnally gnarly on a wobbly barn lit up with lights. High stakes and even higher airs—on one slide Will was fifteen feet above the ground, balled up under the roof’s overhang and flat-basing the wall at thirty mph! The session ended shortly before midnight, and we packed our bags and drifted back north to Dean Runke’s pad.

Day Five went off like a waterlogged bottle rocket, as dudes were already thinking about their next gig—powder jumps in Tahoe, epic pillow lines in Whistler, urban features to assault in Montréal. Despite the “over it” vibe, Marie and Jake mustered the moxie to kill an upward-sloped Jersey barrier, and Max got heavy off a super-sized transition to barnride—both features that required forty-mph tow-ins on icy parking lots. It was an impressive ending to a Vermont shred tour absent of hits in the famed Killington U-trench or cliff drops on Mt. Mansfield. Our trip was a twock on the other side—if you were man enough—but now it was time to follow the storm’s lead and blow out of Vermont. This place was covered and uncovered, and that was that.